townhouse!

i don't know if i ever wrote about it before, but we're buying a townhouse! it's still being built as you can see. but they just put the roof on and the outer walls are up now too we got to do a walk through this past weekend and check out the inside. i can't wait to move in to our own place and move out of the house! well the target date is september/october. is that really only 3 months away? well i'm not moving in till after we get married but i'm getting excited even thinking about all the painting and decorating we (i?) get to do! sam says i'm a closet home depot freak (or something like that) and i think it might be true. i love DIY projects like on hgtv... oooh.... i really can't wait (but i guess i'll have to).

we've been trying to take pictures of it as it comes up. it started with just DIRT...

then a frame..
then a roof...
then walls!
our walkthrough last saturday. love the kitchen!


:) better than my last post yeah?

mejiro pictures

i don't know if the pictures came out on the last post (they don't on my computer anyway)

mejiros: no puffballs for me

In my junior year of high school, a pair of mejiros (my favorite bird!) made a nest in the tree right outside my front door. they had 3 eggs and those hatched into 3 bald (ugly) chicks which matt thought were disgusting. but one day they suddenly grew feathers and they were 3 puffballs of cuteness..and then one day they flew away. watching them grow up was the coolest thing!

anyway, this past weekend i noticed a nest was starting to form in the same tree outside my front door. and then i saw a pair of mejiros, one carrying a bundle of grass in its beak. and everyday the nest has been getting bigger. they use grass, ferns, zuki fur.. whatever is lying around. and i also wonder.. are they the same mejiros that made the nest outside my door 9 years ago? i don't think they live that long, but i had a cool thought that maybe they are the little baby mejiros i saw grow up, and now they returned to have their own family. this thought made me so happy! so then i thought, wouldn't be really neat if i could document it? maybe take a picture every day or two to see the eggs, then hatch, then baby birds, then fluffy puffballs? so this morning before work i went outside to take this picture of the nest. the parents weren't too happy, twittering at me from a nearby tree (picture above). so i figured i'd better stop stressing them out and i went inside and took the rest of the pictures from behind the window.

WELL, i guess they didn't like that because when i got home from work today, the nest was totally GONE! no nest, no mejiros... :( so sad! i scared them off!!! at first i thought maybe the nest fell down, but when i look below the tree, there are only a few scraps of ferns and strings and grass.. the rest of the nest has vanished. i think they decided to get out of here and take their nest with them, figuring they'd get intruded upon too much here.

anyway, although i'm totally bummed out about this, i did learn something: don't bother nature or you'll mess it up. don't get greedy and try to take too many pictures. just enjoy the experience or you might lose it altogether. that or wait until birds lay their eggs to start bothering them so they are committed to the spot and can't move house and take all future puffballs with them.

AHHHHH I'M SO BUMMED!!!

where i work

this is where i work.. thought you might like to see. i have my very own cubicle, and an $800 chair, woo hoo! this picture was from Christmas time, hence the caroling penguins.

and this is the pole by my desk. we made it into the north pole, haha! :D 

fun at the zoo

a couple of weeks ago, we went to the zoo. my favorite was this guy, who was sunbathing, getting his tummy all warm..
then there were 2 of them doing it..

these .. apes (?) were thinking really hard about something..

this one's having a bad day...

and sam's kid..

ate his map of the zoo!
:)

up on the roof

i found a great place to eat lunch. this on top of the parking garage of the building next to mine.
it's weird to have a park on top of a building in the middle of downtown, but really nice! unfortunately a lot of it is fenced off/under construction, but i still like to go here.
This is the fenced off part..

this is the bench where i like to eat lunch.
and this part is fenced off too...
this is the view from the top. aloha tower & there's always some kind of cruise ship there.
:) 

The Lotus Effect

I am reading a book now called "The Gecko's Foot". it's about inventions brought about by bio-inspiration. the first chapter was about the lotus effect, which is the term for the way lotus leaves are self-cleaning. these scientists would look at leaves under the microscope all the time but leaves need to be cleaned first. then they noticed that some leaves don't ever need to be cleaned. under strong magnification, the surface of a lotus leaf is all jiggy-jaggy, like the teeth of a comb. A drop of water will actually sit on the leaf, not flattened out like how it would on say, on glass, but very round, almost like a ball. this is because of the air, the "space" between the comb teeth pushing upwards on the water droplet. because the water stays more spherical, it also refracts light more, making it sparkly, appearing to have inner light. below is a picture i took on maui of some leaves in a pond. the water on them actually looked like shiny gems, but i didn't know why at the time. lotus leaves are self cleaning because when water rolls off the leaf, it takes all dirt and particles with it because the dirt is more attracted to the water than to the jiggy-jaggy leaf surface. anyway, they are now using the lotus effect as inspiration for things like self-cleaning paint for houses, and fabric-- remember that GAP commercial? or was it dockers? those spill-proof pants use the lotus effect! they're looking at other ways they can use it too.. pretty neat stuff.

 

bachi in action

so here's my funny story of the day. i was waiting to cross the street by one of those really wide crosswalks with the horizontal stripes all along it. this is a small road where cars are just supposed to stop if people are waiting since it's not by a stoplight or anything. anyway, me and this lady were waiting and no one seemed to be stopping. then the cars started to stop but this one car was inpatient i guess, so it gassed it so hard that the tires spun and made smoke and that loud squealing noise, and zoomed really fast around the car in front, roaring its engine, and raced right across the crosswalk. well right at the moment it crossed the sidewalk, a metal part just fell out from underneath the car onto the road! it looked like a cylinder with 2 rings around it, and it made a really loud clanging noise too but the car was already speeding away. the lady next to me laughed out loud. i just shook my head, and we crossed the street.

i think the morals of the story are:
1) always let pedestrians cross
2) don't try and show off if you have a crappy car that's ready to fall apart.
3) bachi is real. don't do stupid stuff!

finally a post

** this is just complaining so if you have better things to do, please do that instead**

well i'd like to say i've been up to all sorts of exciting things but i have just been working and working and working. these past 2 weeks we were bringing up a new system at the hospital so i had to be there for "support", which meant being at Kapiolani from 6am to 6pm every day. i liked the people i met there, and i learned some useful things, but that whole 12 hour shift thing totally SUCKED. as in wake-up-at-4am-get-home-after-7pm-no-overtime-pay-SUCKED. and actually nevermind the no overtime pay, we didn't get paid ANYTHING for all those extra hours of work. sorry if i sounds salty but i did not like working 4 hours for free everyday. maybe if i loved my job i wouldn't mind. maybe if i felt like i was compensated either with profound knowledge, or money like how normal employees are paid, i wouldn't mind. in this company, you are either an "exempt" employee or a "non-exempt" employee. i don't know exempt from what? but exempt is like salary workers and non-exempt is like those who get paid hourly. these non-exempt workers who get paid by the hour, like nurses, get overtime if they work over so many hours a week, and are not allowed to work after they get off and clock out. in fact, they can get into serious serious trouble if they even so much as check their email from home. salary "exempt" workers (like me) on the other hand don't get overtime, no matter how many hours we put in after a regular day's work. and i am frickin getting paged at 4am in the morning to fix things.. not getting compensated for that either. maybe exempt means exempt from getting paid. i dont know. i think i wouldn't mind so much if i was actually getting paid enough so i would feel like all the extra work is worth my time. but at this point i am making just a little more than i was making at helpdesk so when i divide that by the extra hours i work, i am actually making less. for doing more. how's that?

i think what this all comes down to is that i don't like my job. i know i've only had this new position for a month so i should give it a chance but it is not making a good impression on me so far. i don't know what it is i'm meant to do with my life but something tells me this is not it. oh well, i will keep an eye out, and at least gain some experience in the meantime.

blah.